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In this provocative and scholarly book, Kancha Ilaiah propounds a view of Gautama Buddha and his sangha that will change the way we think of both. Eschewing both religious obscurantism and a conventional reading of history, Kancha Ilaiah uses his considerable erudiction to take us on a journey into the past, to rediscover the life and thought of this man who gave up kingship to search for the truth. Along the way he uncovers the roots of democratic Indias ...
In `The Weapon of the Other' Kancha Ilaiah contends that since colonial times, Hindu religious texts, which were read only by a small minority of upper-caste leaders, have been projected as sources of Indian nationalist thought while the Buddhist scriptures, the Bible and the Quran, whose readers were far more numerous, are relegated to the periphery of discussions about nationalism. He explores the possibility of examining Indian nationalism from an ...
The most gratifying thing for me was that this book was listed as a millennium book along with Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste. Moreover, it has been translated into several Indian languages. In a way it has become a weapon in the hands of Dalitbahujan activists. (From the new Afterword to the second edition). Kiancha Ilaiah writes with passionate anger, laced with sarcasm on the caste system and Indian society. He looks at the socioeconomic and ...